Other Meanings of “Brainstorm”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marlena from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Marlena. How are you?

I’m good, thanks. How are you doing?

All right.

We’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind today?

Well, I was reading a book that was written in the 1930s, and I noticed one of the words that they used sounded out of context. And the sentence was, the grouch and the brainstorm are not for us.

So I happened to have a dictionary written in 1934 around, and I looked up the word brainstorm, and I was really surprised by the definition that I read.

Let’s hear it. So the definition is a violent, transient, mental derangement manifested in a maniacal outburst.

Wow. And what was the sentence in the book again?

The grouch and the brainstorm are not for us.

They are not.

The grouch is definitely not for us.

I don’t know about the brainstorm.

Yeah.

What did that mean?

What was it in context?

It was in context to making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and not sort of acting out. And so when I read that, you know, grouch, that made sense. But brainstorm, the way that I use that word today, I couldn’t really understand why that was something I needed to be careful of or not do. And so that’s why I looked it up.

Yeah, that’s really fascinating because today a brainstorm is something really positive, right? You get people together and you just throw ideas and see what sticks. I always love collecting those puddles after a brainstorm, you know, because you get new ideas.

It is really interesting that early on the term brainstorm really had that kind of meteorological phenomenon happening inside your head. It meant a fit of rage or a sudden change of mood or behavior. And you go back and you look at, say, newspapers in the 1860s, and there are a lot of accounts of trials where people blame some crime that they committed because of a brainstorm that they had. You know, that it was that it was an actual mental phenomenon that made them lose control.

And it wasn’t until the early 1920s that we started to see a change in how people talked about brainstorms. And in fact, there was a collection of college slang from Johns Hopkins University in the early 1930s where they defined a brainstorm as something different. They defined it as a sudden and usually fortunate thought. So it really has undergone a revolution.

And Grant, there was that famous trial that used that term brainstorm in a whole different way.

Yeah, that’s right. Prior to the 1920s, brainstorm and kind of the mental illness meaning was mostly British and not very American. But in 1906 and 1907, there was a huge scandalous trial where a millionaire, Harry K. Thaw, shot to death the famous architect Stanford White in a crowded theater in front of a thousand people for his treatment of Thaw’s wife, who was the beautiful actress and model Evelyn Nesbitt. And this was enormous. You can’t even imagine how huge this was.

One of the defense’s arguments was that Harry Thaw was a victim of a brainstorm, and that made him insensible to his own actions. So this word was bandied about, used by the defense, but mocked by the prosecution, and of course was in headlines and in newspapers all across the country. And I think maybe there was a kind of a reinterpretation stemming from that trial.

So, yeah, you’ve really zeroed in on a really fascinating revolution.

I hope you have a newer dictionary than that.

I do. I do.

Marlena, thank you so much for sharing your reading with us. And anytime you come across something else worth a natter, give us a call, will you?

Sure will do. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.